Controlled Contact
Posted on 17 May 2026 @ 6:03am by Lieutenant Commander Claire Dunross MD
2,157 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission: The Starfall Carnival
// USS Arawyn :: Holodeck 2 :: After The Sparrow Club Session //
The holodeck still felt charged.
Not from the program anymore. The cage had been dismissed, the harsher environmental settings easing back into something closer to a standard training room. But the air still held the heat of exertion, the mineral edge of sweat, the faint ozone-threaded scent of overworked emitters, and the sterile tang of medical sealant warming under a dermal regenerator.
Heavy bags hung silent along the far wall. Towels lay across shoulders. A few officers lingered in loose clusters, still talking through holds, slips, missed blocks, and the kind of bruising that would look worse tomorrow than it felt tonight.
Claire Dunross stood near one of the benches with her compact medical bag open at her side, still dressed more for practicality than participation. She held a dermal regenerator in one hand and a look of professional disapproval in reserve.
“Hold still,” she said, voice calm, direct, and carrying just enough Highland lilt to soften the instruction without weakening it.
The young security officer in front of her stopped trying to twist around and inspect the scrape along his own shoulder.
“I’m fine, Doctor.”
“Aye,” Claire replied, sweeping the regenerator across the abrasion with efficient precision. “Which is why you’re sitting upright, speaking clearly, and annoying me in complete sentences. That doesn’t mean I’m letting you wander out with half the mat embedded in your skin.”
A nearby ops ensign snorted into his towel.
Claire’s eyes shifted toward him without lifting her head. “You’re next.”
The ensign immediately found something fascinating on the floor.
The security officer smiled despite himself and held still after that, which Claire counted as a minor victory. She finished the pass, checked the skin response, and applied a light regenerative sealant before stepping back.
“You’ll live,” she said. “Avoid heroic shoulder rolls for twenty-four hours.”
“I don’t think I was doing heroic shoulder rolls.”
“No,” Claire agreed, closing the sealant capsule. “You were attempting them. The distinction matters.”
That earned a few tired laughs from the others waiting nearby.
She moved on.
A split knuckle. A bruised cheekbone. One strained wrist from someone who had learned, apparently for the first time, that gripping harder was not a universal solution. Claire patched each with the same measured attention. No fuss. No dramatics.
Just a steady rhythm of assessment, treatment, instruction, and release.
This, at least, was honest medicine.
Minor injuries. Immediate causes. Bodies responding to impact, strain, pride, and physics. No invisible polymer sabotaging a vaccine scaffold. No children failing to improve on monitors that should have been telling a better story. No desperate calculations about whether treatment would work fast enough.
Just bruises.
Just people who had chosen to test themselves in a room where the worst outcome was likely to be a limp, a lesson, or a lecture from Medical.
Her gaze drifted across the room.
Grayson McKinney stood near the edge of the mat, one hand resting loosely on his hip while he listened to Lieutenant Keagan explain something with sharp, controlled intensity. He had changed out of the easy command posture he wore in uniform into something more relaxed, but only on the surface. Sweat darkened his shirt at the collar and between his shoulders. The tape around his hands had started to fray. His face carried that open, amused patience that made people lean toward him even when they had every reason to be intimidated by his size.
He was laughing at something Keagan said.
Not loudly. Not performatively.
Warmly.
Claire watched him shift his weight.
There.
A fractional tightening along the left side. Subtle enough that most would miss it. A breath taken slightly shallower than the last. His right arm moved naturally, but when he turned, he avoided opening fully through the ribs.
Minor contusion, she thought.
Not serious. No guarding consistent with fracture. No breath instability. No pallor, no compensatory weakness beyond the instinctive reluctance of a body objecting to impact.
Someone had landed a clean shot.
Claire’s mouth twitched.
Good.
She looked away before he could catch her looking.
The ops ensign approached reluctantly, holding out his hand as though presenting evidence.
Claire glanced at the knuckles. “You punched something improperly.”
“It was a pad.”
“That does not appear to have improved your technique.”
“I thought I was supposed to commit.”
“You were supposed to align your wrist before committing.” She took his hand gently but firmly, angling it under the portable scanner. “Commitment without structure is how people keep me employed.”
Across the room, Grayson’s laugh rolled low and warm again.
Claire did not look up.
She finished the ensign’s treatment and sent him off with instructions to use a cold compress if swelling developed. By then, the crowd had thinned. Officers drifted toward the exit in twos and threes, tired in the satisfying way that followed controlled exertion rather than battle damage.
Eventually, only a handful remained.
Then fewer than that.
Claire was repacking the med bag when Grayson approached.
She knew it was him before she looked up.
Not by the sound of his steps. For a man his size, he moved with infuriating quiet. It was something else. The shift in the air beside her. The familiar warmth of his presence. Sandalwood beneath the sharper scents of sweat, matting, and cooling emitters.
“You know,” he said, stopping beside the bench, “most doctors would have run for the hills after watching half the crew voluntarily throw themselves at each other.”
Claire secured a clasp on the med bag. “Most doctors lack imagination.”
“That what this was? Imaginative medicine?”
“Preventative medicine,” she corrected, glancing up at him. “Or at least preventative enough that Sickbay wasn’t required afterward.”
His grin widened. “That almost sounded like approval.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late.”
“A pity.”
He leaned one hip lightly against the bench, broad shoulders relaxing, though not quite evenly. Claire noticed again. The slight restriction. The careful breath. The bruised muscle protesting when he angled toward her.
She said nothing.
He watched her close the med bag, eyes tracking the efficient placement of each item. “Were you planning to be on the sidelines for every one of these?”
Claire’s hands paused only briefly before continuing.
“There will be more, then?”
“That depends on whether the captain decides I’m building morale or enabling a shipwide conspiracy of bruises.”
“Given the room’s general condition, the case could be argued either way.”
“I prefer morale.”
“I assumed you would.”
He tilted his head slightly, studying her. Not pressing. Not quite teasing. Curious in that way of his that always felt less like social habit and more like tactical patience.
“So?” he asked. “Sidelines?”
Claire folded the med bag closed and rested one hand on top of it.
“I’m not much of a fighter.”
Grayson’s brows lifted.
She gave him a look. “Don’t start.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were preparing to.”
“That’s a medical diagnosis?”
“Pattern recognition.”
His expression warmed, but he let the silence hold.
Claire looked past him toward the now-empty mat. The space seemed larger without bodies moving through it. Less charged. More revealing. She could see enough to understand some of the value in it, even if she would not have chosen this method herself. The crew who had walked out looked tired, bruised, and oddly lighter. More grounded in their bodies. More aware of each other.
That mattered.
“I can see why they came,” she said after a moment. “There’s something useful in learning what happens when adrenaline has nowhere polite to go.”
Grayson’s grin softened into something quieter.
“That your official medical opinion?”
“It is an observation.” Her gaze returned to him. “Not a full endorsement.”
“I’ll take a partial.”
“You usually do.”
He laughed under his breath.
Claire glanced down at the med bag, thumb brushing absently along the seam. “But if you’re asking whether I intend to stand on the edge of the mat with a regenerator every time you invite half the ship to test their pain tolerance, the answer is probably no.”
“Probably?”
“I’m leaving myself room for poor judgment.”
“That’s generous of you.”
“I try.”
He studied her for another beat. “And if I asked whether you wanted to step in next time?”
Claire’s expression did not change, but something in her posture settled.
“I’d say you’ve overestimated my enthusiasm for being thrown at the floor by people twice my size.”
“Not twice your size.”
Her eyes lifted.
He held up one hand. “Mostly not.”
“Reassuring.”
“But maybe a smaller setting,” he said, voice gentler now. “If you wanted. Just you and me. Basics. Balance. Escapes. How to make someone regret assuming smaller means easier.”
Claire studied him for a beat.
There it was. Not quite worry. He carried it better than most, hidden under humor and invitation, but it was still there. The instinct to put knowledge between someone and danger. To make the boundary visible without making it sound like a cage.
“If you’re worried about me,” she said, “you can say so.”
His smile returned, but softer this time. “Would you let me?”
“That depends entirely on how patronizing you intend to be.”
“Not patronizing.”
“Good.”
“Maybe mildly concerned.”
“Mildly is acceptable.”
“Professionally invested?”
“That sounds worse.”
“Personally invested?”
Claire looked at him then.
The gym had gone quiet around them. The remaining program lights cast a warm sheen over the mat, softening the hard lines of the equipment and catching along the edges of his face. He was still damp from exertion, still carrying the session in his posture, still favoring his ribs by a margin so small he likely thought he was hiding it.
She could have mentioned it.
She could have stepped closer, pressed two fingers along the intercostal line, and told him exactly where the strike had landed. She could have reminded him that pretending pain was irrelevant did not make it tactically invisible. She had done it before.
Instead, she let him have the dignity of an unremarked bruise.
For now.
“I am experienced enough to know that I don’t panic easily,” she said. “I’ve worked through hull breaches, triage surges, pediatric crisis medicine, and more than one patient who mistook blood loss for an invitation to argue.”
Grayson’s mouth twitched.
“And,” Claire continued, tone smoothing into something almost dry, “as a doctor, I am alarmingly good at defending myself. Especially with a good hypospray in hand.”
His brows rose. “Alarmingly?”
“Aye.”
“That sounds like a story.”
“It sounds like several.”
“And here I thought you weren’t much of a fighter.”
“I’m not.” She lifted the med bag from the bench. “I prefer not to fight. That is not the same as being helpless.”
The humor in his expression softened into something more serious. More appreciative.
“No,” he said quietly. “It isn’t.”
A small silence settled between them.
Claire let it breathe.
Then she added, “A smaller setting, however, might be acceptable.”
His eyes brightened. “Might?”
“Might,” she repeated. “Provided you remember that I am a physician, not one of your tactical officers.”
“That means I should go easy?”
“That means if you throw me too hard, I know exactly which nerve clusters to retaliate against.”
Grayson laughed, low and delighted. “That’s fair.”
“It’s medically informed.”
“It’s terrifying.”
“It should be.”
She lifted the med bag from the bench, and he reached automatically as if to take it from her. Claire’s hand closed around the strap before he could.
His gaze dropped to her hand, then back to her face.
She arched a brow.
He withdrew his hand with exaggerated care. “Not patronizing.”
“Learning already.”
“I’m a fast study.”
“We’ll see.”
They started toward the holodeck doors together, the gym behind them settling back into programmed stillness. Claire matched his pace without thinking. Or perhaps she did think about it, but chose not to correct herself.
As they reached the arch, she glanced at his side, brief and precise.
“By the way,” she said lightly, “cold compress on the ribs when you get back to your quarters.”
Grayson stopped.
Claire kept walking one step, then turned back, expression composed.
His eyes narrowed with immediate suspicion. “You noticed.”
“Of course I noticed.”
“And you weren’t going to say anything?”
“I just did.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” she agreed, and there was the faintest curve to her mouth. “It’s more efficient.”
He stared at her for a moment, then laughed under his breath and shook his head.
Claire stepped through the doors first. Her mouth curved faintly. “If we do this smaller session, I expect my instructor in working order.”
LtCmdr Claire Dunross, MD
Asst Chief Medical Officer
RSS Feed